News & Events: Fetal Surgery

Pediatric Surgeon Tippi MacKenzie, MD was awarded $12.1 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to treat fetuses in the womb suffering from alpha thalassemia major, a blood disorder that is only detected in the last few months of pregnancy and is almost uniformly fatal.
Dr. MacKenzie, an associate professor in the UCSF Division of Pediatric Surgery and co-Director of the UCSF Center for Maternal-Fetal Precision Medicine, is using hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), taken from the mother's bone marrow, and transplanting them into the fetus before birth. The fetus's [...]

Pediatric surgeon Michael R. Harrison, M.D. and UC Berkeley engineer Phillip Messersmith, Ph.D. are collaborating on an NIH-Funded research project to improve glues used in fetal surgery procedures, notably those used to treat twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Dr. Harrision, widely acknolwedged as the "father of fetal surgery", is Director Emeritus of the Fetal Treatment Center and leads the research of the Harrison Lab. The full story was recently reported in UC Berkeley News.
UC Berkeley engineer Phillip Messersmith is happy to be learning lessons from a lowly mollusk, with the [...]

UCSF News reports on the discovery by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco that fetuses with enlarged ventricles, the fluid-filled cavities inside the brain, may be less likely than other fetuses to benefit from surgery in the womb to treat spina bifida. These findings were based on data from the 2011 Management of Myelomeningocele (MOMS) study, which demonstrated the potential benefit of treating spina bifida, a birth defect, in utero.
The researchers found that fetuses with enlarged ventricles were more likely to require a second surgery to relieve a [...]

UCSF News report on how the immune system drives pregnancy complications after fetal surgery in mice.
As a fetal surgeon at UC San Francisco, Tippi MacKenzie, MD, has long known that conducting surgery on a fetus to correct a problems such as spina bifida often results in preterm labor and premature birth.
Now, MacKenzie and her UCSF colleagues have shown that, in mice at least, pregnancy complications after fetal surgery are triggered by activation of the mother's T cells – the same T cells that cause the body to reject a donor organ after transplant surgery
"Here at UCSF, the [...]

For years, surgeons have been seeking ways of operating on babies in the womb, reasoning that medical abnormalities are easier to address while the fetus is still developing. Now, for the first time, a large clinical trial has shown that fetal surgery can also benefit infants with non life-threatening conditions. The eight-year study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that babies born with myelomeningocele, the most common form of spina bifida, a debilitating spinal abnormality, were twice as likely to walk and experienced fewer neurological problems with in [...]

UCSF News reports on fetal stem cell transplantation, taking healthy cells from the bone marrow of a donor, and transplanting them into the fetus through ultrasound-guided injections with the goal of having the implanted cells, or graft, replenish the patient's supply of healthy blood-forming cells.
UCSF researchers have tackled a decade-long scientific conundrum, and their discovery is expected to lead to significant advances in using stem cells to treat genetic diseases before birth. Through a series of mouse model experiments, the research team determined that a mother's immune response [...]

As a gifted pianist in high school, Assistant Professor of Surgery Tippi MacKenzie, MD, spent every Saturday studying music at Juilliard. This musical training was good preparation for her current work as a researcher and surgeon.
"When you're playing the piano, you work out the details in a dif cult passage until it's perfect," she said. "It's the same with science. If there's an issue with your experiment, you can't just sweep it under the rug. you tackle that problem." With a smile, she added, "The technical ne motor skills also come in handy as a surgeon."
Now a fetal and [...]